God is at Work!

We are excited to report two things.

First, we want to tell the story about our teammates, Jonathan and Sarah Chadbourn. They announced in February (I believe) that they were leaving for Paris on May 1st. They scheduled an appointment to get their visa. They went to their Visa appointment in Chicago on March 10th (a simple visit which took less than 15 minutes in total) and received their visas 6 DAYS later. Amazing! (The photo here is of Jonathan and Sarah and their two kids: Claire and Matthew.)


Now, fast-forward to May 2nd when Jonathan and Sarah arrived in Paris. Their kids did great on the overnight trip and they began the process of getting cell phones, a bank account and a Carte de Sejour (like a residency card). All went smoothly...a little too smoothly for the typical France experience. Finally, they began looking for an apartment.

Now, I must interject more information here before telling the rest of the story. We know of 4 other missionaries who have searched for an apartment in Paris in the last 3 years. Family #1 took 7 or 8 weeks, family #2 took 2 months, family #3 took 7 weeks, family #4 took 8 weeks. Jonathan and Sarah went for their first day of apartment searching on Friday, May 15th. They had 2 appointments lined-up. The first apartment they didn't really like. The second apartment, they did. Saturday, May 16th, they went to turn in their paperwork to try to rent this apartment. On the spot, the landlord of the apartment agreed to rent to them. Isn't that incredible!

Because Jonathan and Sarah do not speak French (they begin language studies June 1st), our team leader, Jim Shoberg was speaking with the landlord on their behalf. This is what Jim wrote in his e-mail about the conversation he had with the landlord:

"As we arrived [at the apartment], Jonathan asked me, "How long do you think it will take the owner to respond to our application?" I thought by Wednesday of next week we should know something. Well, blow that away!

The owner met us there and invited us back up to the apartment, and wanted to see their documents. "Oh, (to Jonathan) you're a pastor?" That gave me a chance to explain why we had come to France. (Pastor is what the government sees us as.) I explained that we haven't come to impose any kind of plan, but that though people are distancing themselves from the church (Catholicism is understood in that statement) we see that people still have spiritual needs that aren't met and we came to discover with French people who Jesus is, based on the Bible. He agreed, "People either have nothing, or they look for it in something...even in Buddism," was his answer. I wondered if the owner was going to say something like, "Well don't have church meetings here," but he continued to have the same favorable demeanor that I sensed yesterday when we first went into the apartment.

We talked a little longer, he read over all the papers, and then said to me, "I accept, they can rent this apartment." I'm sure my face and body language didn't express how astonished I felt. Things DON'T usually move this quickly. He didn't call anyone at France Mission (our partner) who is backing our efforts to verify the papers. I think he just saw Jonathan and Sarah as trustworthy people."

God is at work!

Now, for the second piece of news: we are at 74% of our needed monthly support. Yes! That's right - our support jumped 12 percent in a couple of weeks. Is that the Lord at work, or what? We are so excited. We are getting really close to being able to set a departure date! Praise God!